


Change of Hands

by Nightfoot



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Drama, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1497739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightfoot/pseuds/Nightfoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A terrorist attack leaves Flynn badly wounded, and it's going to take a lot more than an Apple Gel to get back on his feet again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blast

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a one shot, but then it got out of hand. It's now about 20k and will update over the next couple of days. Anyway, because it was supposed to be short I didn't want to bring in a whole subplot about the conspiracy behind the scenario (If I had this would probably have turned into a novel), so I used the premise of a story I have planned for the future, and then obviously couldn't answer everything because that would spoiler future things. In fact, the initial scenario is a rejected plot-point from this future fic, so you can think of this as a preview of things to come.

It was funny, sometimes, how insignificant things could come together and create such a big mess.

Estelle had invited Flynn to travel to Desier with her. She was going on a trip with Rita to find some rare minerals she wanted to examine for some mana experiment. Estelle probably wasn't needed, but after a few years of working with politics in Zaphias, she'd been bitten by wanderlust bug. He'd considered trying to stop her, because wandering the desert was no place for a princess, but he'd seen that set in her jaw that said no human could stop her and gave up trying to keep her safe in Zaphias.

"Come with us, Flynn," she'd said in his office the day before setting out. "It would be fun and you deserve some time off."

It did sound fun, but… "Thank you for the offer, Lady Estellise, but I have far too much work here to justify an excursion to Desier."

He didn't think too much about it. He received invitations to attend various functions all the time, and had become accustomed to turning them down when he had too much work. So he let her go, not even feeling like deciding to stay was a major decision.

Then there were the protesters. In recent months, unrest had spread throughout Zaphias. Many civilians demanded government reform, with more representation for commoners and a Council that did more than serve the needs of just the nobility. Flynn could hardly blame them, and though he had to keep up a professional act, in private he agreed with the protesters. He'd send knights out to break up rallies if they got too out of hand, but he secretly cheered them on for bringing attention to the very issues he was trying to fix. Most of them were from the lower quarter; they were his friends and neighbours, and he was on their side. Perhaps he'd taken it for granted that all of them understood that.

There were the renovations on the castle, too. Ioder had said something about wanting to update some rooms from the older style as part of moving on from the problems of the past. It was mostly symbolic, but Flynn couldn't argue against the logic of tearing down some statues of emperors who really shouldn't be remembered fondly. The renovations meant contractors and workers were constantly entering and exiting the castle, which meant the knights had far more people to screen for security than normal.

Ioder told him he didn't have to come to the Council meeting today, since they were talking about minor government policy issues that the commandant didn't need to be part of. After quickly weighing how much time he would have after the meeting against how thick his stacks of paperwork were, he decided he had time to attend after all. With the protesters outside, he was nervous about letting the Council make decisions without him present, in case they decided it was time to crack down on the non-violent protests. He'd attend the meeting just in case.

The meeting started slow. Flynn really didn't need to be there. It was mostly about internal Council policies rather than decisions that would affect the empire at large, but Flynn stuck around just in case. He sat at the edge of the room, near a tall window draped in blood-red curtains. As the Council talked, he allowed his mind to drift. Maybe tonight he should head down to the lower quarter and see if Yuri wanted to join him for dinner. Yuri wasn't in town often, and his guild was just stopping here for a few days, so he should take the chance. Yuri might offer to cook, too. That would be great; he loved Yuri's –

Then the room exploded.

* * *

Yuri was in the public quarter when he heard the boom. All heads whipped to the castle in time to see billowing grey smoke pouring out the wall. Repede's fur bristled as people on the street pointed and shouted. He dropped his bag of groceries and ran, Repede racing at his heels.

The knights at the front didn't stop him as he ran inside the castle. They were too busy shouting orders and running everywhere to give him more than a passing glance, recognize him as Yuri Lowell, and decide he wasn't worth their time. Estelle had left on her trip with Rita about three days ago, so at least he knew she was safe. His destination, then, was Flynn's office so Flynn could tell him what had happened.

He burst into Flynn's office, but his friend wasn't there. Usually he wouldn't be concerned if Flynn wasn't in his office, because it probably meant he was in a meeting somewhere, but with the smell of smoke curling into his nose, dread oozed into his heart. Repede growled, and he shared a nervous look with Yuri. Finding Flynn was now his goal, and he trusted he'd figure out what happened along the way.

It wasn't hard to find the site of the explosion. All he had to do was follow the smell of smoke and run toward the shouting. He and Repede found a hallway packed with people soon later. Halfway down the hallway was a large double-door he was pretty sure was the entrance to the Council chamber, which was the source of the smoke. Yuri wove through the crowd until he spotted a familiar burst of orange hair.

"Sodia! Hey, Sodia."

Her head snapped around, her face tense. "Yuri Lowell?" For a second he saw her gearing up to question what he was doing here, but she quickly decided she had more pressing concerns. Knowing immediately what he wanted to ask, she explained. "There was an explosion in the room being renovated below the Council chamber. We're still trying to ascertain precisely what happened."

He took a glance through the doors and saw carnage. There was a gaping hole in the floor with a ring of tattered ground around the edges of the room. Every window had shattered and several pillars had toppled. The room was grey and soaking wet, and based on the lines of buckets people carried out of the room, he guessed it had recently been on fire. Most alarming of all were the parts of bodies sticking out from under the rubble, coated in blood and dust. Some parts weren't connected to other parts. Repede growled so low Yuri felt it vibrate against his leg rather than hear it, and the dread in his heart throbbed. "Flynn?"

Sodia's stoicism slipped. "Commandant Flynn was… he was in the Council chamber at the time of the explosion. We managed to douse the fire just before you arrived so we haven't yet been able to search the rubble for survivors."

"Come on, Repede."

"Wait!" she grabbed his shoulder. "The floor is unstable. More of it might give out if you walk carelessly."

"So I'll be careful." Repede slipped into the room, and Sodia was too anxious to find Flynn to protest any further. She hung back at the door, not wanting to put any more weight on the floor than necessary, and watched Yuri creep into the room.

It was eerily silent. A layer of ash and debris blanketed every surface and Repede left clear footprints as he sniffed the ground, searching for Flynn. As they crept through the room, Yuri tried to piece together what had happened.

An explosion in the room downstairs, Sodia had said. He didn't know of any construction materials that would blow up like this, so he doubted this was an accident. He thought back to the rising unrest and the increasing anger of protesters he'd seen in bars and nearly kicked himself for not seeing how far they were willing to go. He'd bet his life savings this was a planned assassination attempt. The explosion had set off a fire that burned through the carpet and remains of curtains and furniture, all of which was now soaking wet from the bucket brigades that doused it.

He crept as far as he dared to the edge of the floor and peered into the room below. If the explosion was right below the centre of the room, most of the people would have been killed immediately when it blew up right under their feet. In the room below, he saw a pile of broken furniture and collapsed floor, and more than enough parts of bodies to make his chest tighten. Everyone he saw was wearing Council robes, which he took as a sign of hope that Flynn wasn't one of the corpses in the debris down there.

Repede barked, jolting him out of his thoughts. He looked to Repede to see the dog race toward the wall. Yuri looked ahead and spotted a body lying partially under a crumbled pillar. He couldn't tell if it was Flynn at first, because the part he could see was completely covered in a layer of grey dust, but then Repede reached him and nudged the head, brushing away enough dust to reveal a patch of bright blond hair.

Yuri's heart skipped a beat; it was Flynn alright. He ran to Repede, not even caring that the floor creaked ominously as he went. Behind him, more knights had started entering the room to search the rubble for survivors. Good, they could worry about sorting out which Council member bodies were still alive. All he cared about right now was Flynn.

Yuri dropped to his knees when he reached Flynn's side.  _It's not that bad_ , he told himself. Flynn was still in one piece, at least. That was true, except…

The burns were probably the worst part. A brass rod and a pile of ash nearby indicated there had once been a curtain on the ground next to him, but the fire had reduced it to dust. The fire hadn't done nice things to Flynn, either. Most of the right half of his shirt had burned away leaving a mess of red and black skin underneath. His entire right arm was bright red and mottled with bits of charred grey flesh, and around his hand where there had been little fat or muscle to get in the way, Yuri could even see bone.

The arm got the worst of his, but burns splattered across his torso as well. The shirt that remained was wet, indicating water thrown by bucket into the room had reached him and put out the fire before it consumed him entirely. The side of Flynn's head was dark red, and Yuri noticed a matching stain on the wall next to the window to guess where he'd hit it. A smidgen of blood trickled out of Flynn's ears and Yuri couldn't see the state of his legs under the rubble of the fallen pillar, but he guessed they couldn't be in great shape.

He had never been so afraid of an answer when he slowly reached his fingers to Flynn's neck to find a pulse. With the extent of Flynn's injuries, it could go either way. He couldn't shake a million worst-case scenarios playing through his head as he waited for a sign. _Please…_

There! A tiny flicker of movement. The pulse was weak, but it was there. Yuri heaved a sigh of relief as he pulled his hand away.

Repede whimpered and gently licked Flynn's forehead, not seeming to mind the dust.

Yuri felt like he might throw up so he grabbed the rough fur at Repede's shoulder for support. "It's going to be ok. He's alive."

"Commandant!"

Sodia had reached him. She pulled up short when she saw Yuri kneeling by his side and Yuri didn't have to turn around to imagine the horrified look on her face. "Is he…?"

"He's alive."

She let out a deep breath. "Thank heavens. I'll get one of the medics and a stretcher."

* * *

Pain. Pain. Everything hurt. Where was he? What had –  _ow_. Why did everything hurt?  _Owww_. Flynn couldn't even begin to tally all his pain. The best he could do was try to group it together.

Head – ouch. Throbbing. Localized on his left side, maybe? Hard to tell. Bad headache.

Left arm – ok. Bruises, perhaps. Sore, but not devastating.

Torso –  _Hurts._  Hurts to breathe. Burning pain across his chest.

Legs – shit. Pain, pain,  _pain_. He couldn't tell what had happened to them between the stabbing signals they kept shooting to his throbbing head.

Right arm –  _fuck_. Nothing but agony. There were a few places that didn't hurt, but the areas around those spots felt like tiny, super-heated needles were repeatedly stabbing him.

What the  _hell_  happened?

Steeling himself, he pried his eyes open. For a few seconds he was confused, but then he recognized the white walls of the castle infirmary. Oh. That made sense. He still couldn't remember what happened, but with the amount of pain he was in, the infirmary was probably the best place for him.

He let out a groan, which turned into a cough, which made his chest hurt. At least, he thought he did. He felt like he groaned and coughed, but didn't hear anything. Maybe his throat was messed up – it certainly hurt. He tried again, because his arm was a spring of pain that kept flooding his body and he couldn't handle this without trying to release it.

He moaned, feeling the vibrations sting through his raw throat. Couldn't hear it. His voice must be weaker than he thought. He raised his voice, putting as much power into his groan as he could. Still nothing.

"H…hey…?" he tried. He needed someone to tell him what had happened, but no one was going to hear him, were they? Not when he couldn't even speak loudly enough to hear it himself. He tried to look at his body to see what state he was in, but all he saw was bandages. He experimentally attempted to move his fingers, but the bolts of agony the lanced through his arm and radiated through his body almost made him pass out again. His throat burned with the effort of screaming even though he couldn't vocalize it for now.

A few seconds later, he saw movement. Yuri! Yuri came into his vision with concern written all over his face. He didn't seem to know what to say, because his mouth flapped but no sound came out.

Yuri paused, staring at him. Flynn stared back, wondering why he still hadn't said anything. He couldn't think too deeply about it because everything hurt. It hurt  _so_  badly. It wanted to curl into a ball and scream at the top of his lungs if that would help deal with this pain.

Yuri mouthed something and through the small amount of clarity he managed to maintain he thought it looked like his name.

He tried to speak. "W…what…?"

Something cold bumped his left hand, and in surprise he glanced over at Repede. When had he come in? Repede opened and closed his mouth like he was barking, but didn't actually vocalize anything. This was getting frustrating. The silence in the room smothered him from all sides and all he wanted was to hear Yuri's voice telling him it was going to be ok.

"Why're… you… so quiet?" What was the point in talking when he couldn't get any sound out? It just hurt his throat and chest.

Yuri still didn't say anything, but his concern deepened. He held up a finger and then walked away, silently. Everything was quiet. So quiet. The room was silent. His breathing was silent even though he felt like it should be ragged.

When Yuri returned, he had a notebook and a pencil. He wrote something quickly and then held it up:  _Can you hear me?_

Flynn frowned in confusion. Hear what?

Yuri held the book with one hand and with the other he snapped his fingers. Flynn saw his fingers move, but no sound came out. Yuri's lips moved again, slowly mouthing, "Can you hear me?"

Realization drummed through him and he slowly shook his head. Yuri  _was_  talking… but Flynn couldn't hear it. He tried to talk, because maybe his voice wasn't gone after all. Maybe his words were plenty loud but his ears couldn't pick them up. "What… hap…pened?"

Yuri wrote again.  _What do you remember?_

Flynn tried to think. What  _did_  he remember? It had just been an ordinary day and now he was here, in more pain than he had ever experienced combined. He'd been doing paper work, and then wasn't there a Council meeting today…? He was pretty sure he'd gone to that… "C-council… meeting?"

Yuri nodded slowly and then held up another page. Yuri was going to have to work on his handwriting if this was going to be a viable form of communication.  _You were at council meeting. Protesters blew it up._

That sounded vaguely familiar. If he really concentrated he could remember snatches of heat and pain and a loud boom, but concentrating made his head hurt. "M…my… arm…"

 _Burned_ , Yuri wrote quickly.  _There was a fire._  Yuri gave him a glance over and then wrote something else, his mouth tight as he went. What he held up was a list of Flynn's injuries with explanations.

_Hit your head. Mild concussion. Bad burns on torso. Some cracked ribs. Right arm really burned. Left arm ok, but bruised. Falling rubble cracked legs in few places – doc said they'll be fine but broken right now. Breathed a lot of smoke. Dunno about ears – doc didn't mention it._

He had trouble concentrating long enough to read all that, so he took it in short snippets. He read a line and then closed his eyes to take a few deep breaths and then read another. It was overwhelming to see at all listed like that, but at least he had answers. It explained why his arm hurt so bad, at least. The parts of it that didn't hurt were probably where he was so badly burned all the nerves were dead.

It all hurt. It hurt, it hurt, it  _hurt_. His arm might as well still be on fire and his legs throbbed and ached. He couldn't see them under the blanket but he knew they must be a mess held together with splints. He could feel himself slipping back into unconsciousness, and he welcomed it. Before he passed out, he managed to ask, "H…his…," a cough interrupted him and, oh, coughing also hurt so much…. "M-majesty…?"

Yuri wrote quickly, trying to get the answer written before Flynn passed out again.  _Ioder's alive. Injured. Not as bad as you._

Flynn managed a small smile, and then passed out.

* * *

Yuri didn't usually like spending a lot of time in the castle, but he also didn't like sitting at home while Flynn was injured so badly. It had been three days since the explosion and they still knew aggravatingly little. Knights had found evidence that some kind of explosive substance had been smuggled into the castle by terrorists disguised as construction workers, and there was little doubt it was tied to the ongoing protests. Yuri had asked around the lower quarter, but everyone swore they knew nothing about it and the ones he knew personally were adamant that they would never want Flynn to get hurt.

Yuri had a feeling Flynn wasn't even the specific target of the attack. From what he understood, Flynn hadn't even supposed to have been at the meeting. Flynn's injuries were severe, but Yuri was beyond grateful he was alive. At the end of the day, after clearing as much rubble as they could and sorting through the bodies found, there had been more deaths than injuries. The death toll numbered somewhere in the mid-twenties, with another sixteen injured. Yuri didn't care too much about the fates of Council members, but he was glad that Ioder at least had survived. He'd been sitting near the back of the room and had suffered a pretty nasty head injury, but was expected to fully recover.

He found himself in Flynn's office, not sure where else to go. Estelle was probably in the middle of the ocean on her way to Desier by now, out of reach for healing. Judith and Ba'ul had left to find her, but they had an entire ocean to cover. There wasn't anything else he could do for Flynn now but wait.

He sat at Flynn's desk and absently twirled a pen around. The bastards who'd done this were going to pay, but he had no idea who they were. He'd been siding with the protesters up until now, but this was too radical for his tastes. Pressuring the Council to reform was all well and good, but blowing them up when that didn't happen fast enough was crossing the line.

The office door opened and Sodia entered. She paused and seemed about to berate him for being here, but then decided it wasn't worth it. "Did you see him today?" She sat across from him and set the folders in her arms on Flynn's desk.

"Earlier. He was still asleep so I didn't want to bother him." When Flynn had first been injured, Yuri couldn't wait for him to wake up and prove he really was alive. Now, Yuri preferred it when Flynn was asleep. Whenever he woke up, agony displayed clearly on his face and he struggled to speak between moans of pain. All the lemon gels in the world couldn't do much in the face of severe burns on almost twenty percent of his body. Just thinking of the sight of white bone surrounded by the blackened and charred remains of the skin of his fingers made Yuri feel sick.

"I talked to the doctor. She said he would probably recover."

Yuri raised his head from the spinning pen. "Probably?"

"Most likely." She didn't seem certain. "At least… she said he would most likely live. The prognosis for regaining function in his arm is… less certain."

Yuri nodded slowly, not even surprised. He'd seen how badly charred it was. "What about his ears?"

"She isn't sure. The blast of the explosion damaged his eardrums. The might heal on their own, or they might…"

"Never recover?"

"Possibly."

"So he'd be deaf forever."

"That's only a possibility," Sodia pointed out with a hurry. "She expects his eardrums will recover on their own."

"Hope so." It was bad enough wondering if Flynn's arm and hand could ever regain full functionality without worrying about him being deaf, too. He supposed he should be grateful Flynn's legs had been crushed, because the rubble kept the fire from burning them as well. "Any progress on catching the guys who did this?"

"No. I'll keep you updated."

"Thanks."

* * *

The next day, Yuri sat next to Flynn's bed. They still hadn't been able to contact Estelle, but at this point Yuri wasn't sure what she would even be able to do. Could healing artes sort out the rupture in his eardrums? Could they regrow all the skin and muscle Flynn had lost on his arm? Maybe, though, at the very least they could ease his pain.

By now, Yuri had pages and pages of conversation written out. He wrote another line.  _Hanks said hi. Says he hopes you get better soon_.

Flynn smiled slightly. "Th-thank him for… for me!" He always spoke either too softly or too loud, since he couldn't hear himself to regulate it. Yuri liked it more when he spoke too softly, because when he was loud it was usually because he was doing his best to suppress a scream.

Yuri held up the paper again.  _Can I get anything for you?_

"Not unless… you can… get me more drugs."

He nodded, his heart aching. Flynn was always so strong and in control, and he was doing a valiant job of maintaining his composure whenever he had visitors. Maybe it was because he let himself slip around Yuri or perhaps Yuri was just better at noticing the small details, but Flynn's face was clearly thinly masking agony. Any one of his injuries would be cripplingly painful but to group them all together…. As soon as Yuri found out the names of whoever planted that bomb, he was going to rip them apart.

"I'll get…" Damn, he kept slipping. He wrote it down instead.  _I'll get the docs to give you more morphine_.

"Do you…" he squeezed his eyes closed and bit his lip as another wave of pain washed over. Yuri doubted he even knew he was moaning.

Yuri forced himself to sit still and wait it out. His instincts wanted to reach out for Flynn and do something to help, like hug him or rub his shoulder or  _something_. Any amount of movement aggravated his injuries, though, so Yuri didn't dare risk it.

When Flynn pulled himself together again, he managed to ask, "Did they tell you when my hearing will come back?"

Yuri shrugged.  _They're not sure. It will._

"Good. This… is annoying. What about… terrorists? Found 'em?"

_Not yet. Sodia's working on it._

"Ok… and the Council?"

 _Shambles. Lots died – dunno which. Ioder's started giving orders from his hospital bed_.

Flynn frowned slightly at that. "I should, too. Can't… can't keep lying around."

Yuri rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Of course you'd say that." You could tell Flynn wasn't fit to go back to work just from listening to him speak. His voice was hoarse and strained from breathing too much smoke and he had to keep pausing to catch his breath between gasps of pain. Yuri scribbled,  _No, stupid. You're hurt worse than Ioder. Take it easy_. He tried to relax around Flynn and reassure him that things would be all right by acting like his usual self, but it was hard when he was so worried that things  _wouldn't_  turn out all right.

"But… the Knights…"

 _Sodia is managing things._  He held the notebook up stubbornly and fixed Flynn with a glare to tell him he'd better stop worrying about his job at a time like this.

Flynn smiled a little, coughed a little more, and took a few deep breaths. "Yuri…" he wheezed, "if my hand doesn't work… I can't be commandant."

Yuri stiffened. He'd been worrying about that too, but he didn't want Flynn worrying about it when he had so much else on his plate. He tried to relax and not let his handwriting shout how worried he was.  _Your hand will heal. Estelle will fix you right up_.

"Can't feel it at all," Flynn mumbled, closing his eyes. "It's there, but… numb. Like I slept on it… for a while."

No kidding. His hand more closely resembled a gnarled tree in the dead of winter. He didn't say that, though.  _Wait for it to heal._

The door opened and a pair of nurses entered. Flynn, not facing the door, flinched when one of them suddenly appeared beside him with no warning, and then gasped as the movement hurt his injuries again.

Yuri tried not to frown too deeply at this. He'd assured Flynn that his hearing would come back, but the doctors honestly weren't positive. He had never put much though into hearing, but it was essential in a battle. If you couldn't hear an enemy coming up behind you, you'd be dead for sure. If Flynn's hearing didn't come back, it wouldn't even matter if he was able to hold a sword again. The Knights had no use for a deaf soldier.

"Good afternoon," one of the nurses said to Yuri. "We need to change his dressings." To Flynn, she smiled and pointed at his bandaged arm and then mimed peeling something off.

Flynn grimaced but nodded. Slight shifts of weight were enough to aggravate the burn to nearly make him cry out, so Yuri couldn't even imagine how bad it must be to have the bandages pulled off, the wound cleaned, and then more dressings reapplied.

Yuri held up a sign.  _Do you want me to go?_

Flynn shook his head and reached for him with his left hand. Yuri reached forward so Flynn could grab him and let Flynn squeeze as the nurses carefully unwrapped the bandages. Flynn's breath caught in his throat and he gripped Yuri as tightly as he could, which was hardly half of his usual strength. As air hit his exposed arm, Flynn scrunched his eyes tight and did his best to suppress a whimper.

Yuri turned his eyes to Flynn's face, because he didn't want to look at his arm. He'd seen enough when he first found Flynn and wasn't keen to see it again. The quick glance he got now said it hadn't changed all that much, and it was enough to make him wonder. Even once Estelle got back, how much could she heal a hand charred to the bone? How could a limb so heavily disfigured ever go back to the way it used to be?

Instead of speculating on the chances of Flynn holding a sword again, he watched his friend's pale face, scrunched up as he took deep breaths. "It's gonna be ok. When Estelle gets here…" He trailed off, reminding himself once again that Flynn couldn't hear him. It was frustrating to say the least. Deafness stood between them like a wall.

He didn't want to look at Flynn's pained face, because it bothered him to see the man who was usually his pillar of stability so torn down. But, he also didn't want to look at Flynn's arm, and wondered where the nurses got such iron stomachs to not have to look away from the horrific injury. He ended up watching the nurses faces, marvelling at what strong character it must take to face such horrors without batting an eye.

While watching the nurses, he saw a flicker of concern in one's eyes. She murmured something to her companion and motioned to something on Flynn's arm, but Yuri couldn't make it out and everything on Flynn's arm looked equally terrible to him. Flynn didn't notice, since his eyes were still closed and obviously he couldn't hear anything. Yuri was glad, because Flynn needed to focus on healing and any other concerns would just worry him.

"Is something wrong?" Yuri asked, glancing at Flynn just long to check that his eyes were still closed.

"Don't worry about it," the nurse said with a forced smile. "We'll let you know if we determine there are any complications."

He didn't like the way she said that, but didn't question further so they could go back to work.

Once Flynn's arm had been cleaned, they moved on to clean the burns on his torso, then changed the bandage on his head wound, and then focused on the wounds on his legs. Flynn had  _so_  many injuries it overwhelmed him.

At long last, the nurses finished. Flynn breathed a sigh of relief, though he didn't let go of Yuri's hand.

"That's all for now," one said. "Do you know if he needs anything else?"

"He said he wanted more morphine. I don't think he's getting nearly enough pain relief."

"We'll do what we can. We'd like to stick to gels because morphine can be dangerously addictive, plus gels heal as well as relieve pain."

"They don't seem to be healing very much."

"They're doing what they can. They're intended for small wounds, not massive injuries like this. I'll talk to the doctor about getting more pain relief, though."

"Good. It just seems cruel to leave him like this."

After the nurses left, Yuri wrote something for Flynn.  _They said they'll get you more morphine._

Flynn managed to smile. "Good."


	2. Decision

The only word Flynn could use to describe his condition was ‘miserable’.  Against all logic, he was sure he was getting  _worse_  instead of recovering.  The only noticeable improvement was that his left ear had begun to heal, but at this point he’d take complete deafness back over the high-pitched ringing plaguing his ear.  It had gone on for hours and having nothing else to distract him drove him mad. 

On top of that, he seemed to have come down with an illness of some kind.  He went back and forth between being so cold he couldn’t stop shivering and then wanted to cry from how much movement that caused his burns, and then so hot he wanted to kick his legs and throw the blanket to the floor.  Considering his legs were still fractured, kicking them was a bad idea. 

Yuri said the explosion had been about six days ago, but it felt like he'd lain here for at least a month.  The days just stretched out for centuries, every second endured with nothing to focus on but how exquisitely painful burns could be.  The burning in his face – he thought he had a fever – combined with the searing heat from his arm and chest, which did a good job of convincing him he was still on fire. 

Morphine wasn’t nearly strong enough.  It kept wearing off within a few hours and his doctor was worried about him building up resistance to it or becoming addicted so she kept giving him gels instead and acting like it was the same thing.  On the plus side, he’d eaten enough gels that his cracked ribs and bruises were almost entirely healed and they had furthered the healing of his legs considerably, but expecting a gel to do anything in the face of a fourth-degree burn was like sending a rookie knight against a horde of monsters. 

He heard something in the distance.  It was impossible to tell what it was because it was so muffled and the high-pitched ringing got in the way, but he tried to feel optimistic that being able to hear anything at all was an improvement.

He saw movement and hoped it was Yuri.  His friend had been in to visit every single day and always did his best to distract him by telling him stories about the lower quarter or about things he’d been up to.  A combination of his own struggles to talk through exhaustion and a hoarse throat and Yuri needing to write everything down and wait for Flynn to read it stilted any attempt at a flowing conversation, but it was the best they could do. It was better than lying here and doing nothing but feeling sorry for himself. 

The person came full into view, but it wasn’t Yuri.  It was his doctor, a woman in a lab coat with blond hair in a tight ponytail.  She said something, and Flynn was pleased to note that he could hear her voice, but frustrated that it was so muffled it was like listening underwater. 

He shook his head and mumbled, “Can’t… can’t hear you.”

She frowned, nodded, and then pulled out a notepad.  Her handwriting was better than Yuri’s, at least.   _Sorry – Good morning, Commandant.  How do you feel today?_

Same question every morning and it never changed.  “Bad.”

The doctor – Flynn couldn’t even remember her name at this point – nodded and pulled out a thermometer.  She held it before his mouth and he figured out he was supposed to open up without her needing to write it down.  With the thermometer under his tongue, the doctor turned to his arm and carefully unwrapped the bandages.  Through an act of unprecedented self-control, he managed to stay silent even though a scream grew in his throat.   He did, however, squeeze his mouth so tight he was amazed the thermometer didn’t crack. 

A minute later, she pulled the thermometer from his mouth and examined it with a frown.  Flynn watched with trepidation – it was never good when doctors frowned at your test results.  She wrote slowly, and Flynn watched her pencil move with anticipation, afraid to find out when she had to say.

When she finally showed him her note, it said,  _Commandant – your wound has become infected and continues to bleed internally.  It may be impossible to cure_.

He knew he wasn’t going to like this.  “M-may?”

She thought for a moment and wrote carefully.  She hesitated before the last word, and then wrote it in firm strokes.   _If the infection does not heal, we may have no choice but amputation_.

“No,” he blurted.  Amputation?!  That was out of the question.  He  _needed_  his arm.

 _Your body is too weak to fight off the infection.  If it progresses out of your arm, it will kill you_.

“Lady Estelle… Estellise… she’ll heal it.”

 _She still hasn’t been reached_.

“She’s coming.”  He had faith in Estelle.  She would get here and heal him and everything would be all right. 

 _Even if she comes in time, we have no guarantee her healing is strong enough to completely regenerate your arm_.

“She c-can do it.”

The doctor watched him carefully while Flynn stubbornly glared back.  He wasn’t going to let them take his arm without a fight. 

She nodded, letting Flynn feel triumphant.   _We will wait as long as we can before making a decision_.

 

* * *

 

“What do you want?”  Yuri stood in Flynn’s office, hand on his hip.  He’d been politely invited to speak with acting-Commandant  Sodia, which was a nice way of saying a pair of knights had cornered him on the street, said, “Sodia wants to see you,” and made it very clear that turning down the invitation was asking for the alternative option of being taken there in handcuffs.

“What do you know about the terrorists?”

Well, at least she didn’t bog him down with formalities and jumped right to the questions.  “Nothing.  I already told you.”

She folded her hands on Flynn’s desk and gave him a look colder than steel that pierced him as much as that knife of hers once had.  “You are a known friend of many people involved in the anti-government protests.  Can you really say you know nothing?” 

“Sure can.  Not everyone protesting the government is a terrorist, you know.  Didn’t you figure that out while investigating everyone?”  Yuri knew for a fact that as soon as Flynn was stable, Hanks was going to want some words about how the knights had left muddy boot prints on his best carpet during their surprise inspection of his house.  “Have you thought about how you’re going to explain that one to Flynn when he gets back to his job?”

Sodia stiffened.  “This is not a normal situation.  Zaphias citizens lodged a direct attack against the government, very nearly committing regicide.  It would be irresponsible to not take every measure possible to identify the culprits.”

“Including breaking into people’s homes, searching through the private stuff, and questioning them on all their activities for the past month?”

“Only known supporters of the anti-government movement.  I would have thought  you would be all for any measure to find the people who injured Commandant Flynn.”

“Yeah, but not including questioning my friends and searching my house.  Did you really need to search  _my_  place?  You can’t seriously think I’m a suspect.”  Could she?  Damn, he hadn’t considered that.  Sodia had tried to kill him once because she thought he was unintentionally hurting Flynn.  What would she do if she thought he’d done something like this on purpose?

“We have to be thorough.  Anyone with known association with the protesters must be investigated, whether we think they would hurt Flynn or not.  After all, you didn’t know Flynn would be in that Council meeting,  _and_  Lady Estellise has seen to it that you have free access into and out of the castle.”

Yuri gaped at her for a second and then slammed his fists on the desk.  “You actually think I’m a terrorist?!”

Sodia’s eyes flicked away and then she hung her head.  “…No.  In my personal opinion, I do not think it is in your character.  Professionally, however, you qualify as a person of interest.  Which is why I need to ask you: where were you the day of the attack?”

Yuri’s face tightened, disgusted that he even need to come up with an alibi to prove he hadn’t nearly killed Flynn.  “I was at the Comet.  My guild arrived in Zaphias late the night before, so I slept in.  Around noon I left to go shopping in the public quarter to pick up things for dinner.  I’m sure a dozen people must have seen me leave, if you don’t trust me.”

Sodia sighed.  “Thank you.  Please understand I had to ask in order to be thorough.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“And you’re certain you don’t have clues about which of your revolutionary friends is responsible?”

Yuri suppressed the urge to roll his eyes.  “I told you, they’re not revolutionary and the ones responsible aren’t my friends.  No one I know wants to overthrow the government, they just want more rights and a more fair system.  Have you considered that the culprits are another group taking advantage of the protests to use them as a scapegoat?”

“It’s possible.  I’ll look into it.”

“Great.  Now if you don’t need to question me any further, I’ll-”

The door opening interrupted him, and a glance over his shoulder showed a nurse.  “Please excuse me,” the nurse said.  “I was sent to find Yuri Lowell.  Dr. Duringer wants to speak with him.  If you’re busy I can come back.”

“Nope, I done here.”  He looked back at Sodia.  “Aren’t I?”

She nodded.  “Yes, you may go.  I do need to ask you not to leave Zaphias until this matter is resolved, just in case.”

Yuri snorted.  “Like I’m going anywhere with Flynn in his condition.  Thanks for nothing.”  He followed the nurse out, still fuming about the ridiculousness of being accused of terrorism. 

He met Dr. Duringer in the waiting room outside the infirmary.  “You wanted to see me?”

“Ah, Mr. Lowell.  Hello.”

He didn’t have time for formalities because if she needed to talk to him, there was probably an issue with Flynn.  “How is he?”

“His condition is deteriorating.”

Yuri swallowed.  “How bad?”

“There is little doubt infection has set into the burn.  It’s making him very sick, and even with medical intervention he doesn’t have the strength to fight it.”

Yuri glanced to the door of Flynn’s room, forcing himself to remain calm.  “Ok.  So, what can you do?”

Duringer frowned.  “I think the only way to stop it will be to amputate the arm.”

It took Yuri a few seconds to even comprehend what she said.  “Amputate?  But… that seems too drastic.  Haven’t you tried to heal it?”

“We’ve made extensive use of Panacea Bottles.  They heal the current infection in his blood, but they aren’t strong enough to completely eliminate the source so it always comes back.  Additionally, I doubt the extensive damage can ever be fully reversed.  His arm will likely be permanently crippled, so killing himself to save a useless arms seems counterproductive.”

“All right.  I get it.  Why are you telling me?”

“The commandant refuses to accept that amputation is necessary.  Are you aware he has you listed as his next of kin?”

“He does?"  This didn't really surprise him, considering Flynn didn't have any other family.

“Yes.  So, if the infection progresses to the point that he is unconscious or delirious, it’s up to you to make the call.”

His eyes widened slightly.  “Me?” 

“If it gets to the point where I need to ask you, it will be because his options are amputation or death.  I should hope it wouldn’t be a difficult decision for you.  In the meanwhile, perhaps you can talk to him?  Letting him get to the point of amputation or death is dangerous.  If we do it now, he can start recovering.”

Yuri nodded slowly.  “I’ll talk to him.”

“Thank you.  And… I’m sorry there isn’t more we can do.”

She left, and Yuri entered Flynn’s room.  He was awake, breathing heavily and sweating profusely.  “Hey,” Yuri said loudly.  He rounded the bed so he could sit on Flynn’s left, since he was still deaf in his right ear.

Flynn turned his head, enough to meet Yuri’s eyes but not enough to smother his ear with the pillow.  “H-h-hey.”

“You can hear me today, then?”

Flynn nodded.  “Sorta.”

“That’s great.”  A smile managed to break through.  “See, I told you it would get better.”

Flynn frowned.  “Pardon?”

Yuri stubbornly kept his smile on and repeated himself, louder and slower.  “I told you it would get better.”

“Oh.  Yeah.  It is.”  He shivered and closed his eyes.  His face was bone white and strands of hair clung to his forehead from sweat.

“But it seems like nothing else is getting better.”

“It is.”  He shuddered again, his face screwed up in pain.

“You’re not fooling anyone.  Your doctor told me your arm is heavily infected.”

Flynn’s eyes flicked open.  “Hrm… she try ta… tell you to cut it off?”

“She mentioned it, yeah.  Have you considered it?”

He closed his eyes and turned away.  “They’re not taking my arm.”

“You might not have a choice.  Flynn, have you seen your hand?  I don’t know if that’s going to heal.”

“They’re not taking it.”  He struggled to string complete sentences together.  “If I can’t hold a sword… I can’t be a knight.”

“Yeah, but the trouble is that you might not be able to hold a sword with the hand you have anyway.”

“I’m not losing my arm!”  The outburst took a lot of strength out of him.  He lay still, eyes closed and taking heaving breaths.  After a long pause, he mumbled, “Promise me, Yuri.  Don’t let ‘em take it.”

Yuri gazed at the bandaged arm, imagining the blackened mess underneath.  Flynn was being pretty stubborn about a potentially-useless heap of charred flesh, but since he was so stubborn perhaps that would translate into a refusal to succumb to infection.  “Ok.  I won’t let them.”

“Promise?”

Yuri nodded, but since Flynn’s eyes were closed he squeezed his hand instead.  “Yeah.  I promise.”

 

* * *

 

Flynn was stuck in a vicious positive-feedback loop.  It was the dead of night and the morphine that had kept him in a fuzzy stupor all afternoon had worn off, leaving everything more raw than before he’d been drugged.  The overwhelming pain of burns and broken bones hitting him all at once combined with the infuriating ringing in his ear made him want to thrash around.  He twisted and squirmed as if a position might possibly exist that didn’t hurt as much, but this movement sent vibrations through his torso and arm that made all the burns start aching even more than before.  This just made him want to thrash around even  _more_ , and the cycle continued. 

He brought his undamaged hand to his mouth and bit down as hard as he could, moaning around his fist.  His shivered, wishing someone would change his sheets.  They were drenched in sweat and he was freezing even as his face burned.  A Panacea Bottle yesterday had cleared up his infection and fever but it was back once again.  His arm was like a spring of infection, and no matter what they did it kept coming back. 

_They could cut it off…_

No, no, no, no!  He couldn’t allow that.  Maybe this couldn’t be cured by normal means, but he just needed to hold on until Estelle got here.  He was positive she could fix this.  He couldn't lose his arm – he just  _couldn’t_.  He’d be forced to retire, because a commandant who couldn’t hold a pen, let alone a sword, was useless. 

All he had to do was wait it out until Estelle got here.  If they came at him with a saw, he’d fight them off tooth and nail.  He’d entered the infirmary with four limbs and he was determined to leave it that way.  He felt like shit and as his fever worsened his mind got foggier, but the determination to do anything in his power to keep his arm was an anchor he could cling to.  If he let them chop it off, he’d be discharged from the Knights and he had no idea what else he could possibly do with his life. 

A particularly violent chill made him convulse.  He was sure he could actually feel tiny sections of necrotic skin slough away from slightly-less-dead burned sections in a dozen spots along his torso and arm and this time he couldn't stop himself from crying out.  At least he could partially hear his distress now.  It was somehow so much more satisfying to hear a scream, even if it was still muffled.

A smothered noise caught his attention and he looked around in confusion, trying to figure out where it had come from.  He'd read once that determining the source of a sound was only possible by comparing the signals in each ear, and he now had a clear demonstration of how true that was.  His right ear was still completely deaf, which made pinpointing the location of anything picked up through the ringing in his left impossible.  Then the mattress compressed and Repede’s face appeared, his front paws on the bed.

“Oh.  H-hey, Repede.  Didn’t… see you.”

Repede had been staying in the castle even when Yuri went home at night so he could keep watch.  He was a loyal guard dog to the end.  “Don’t think you’re s’posed to be here.”

Repede growled, showing how much heed he gave to ‘no dogs in the infirmary’ rules.  The bed heaved as Repede pulled himself the rest of the way on the mattress and Flynn winced.

“Ah!  R-repede, no, there’s no room…”

He plopped on the edge of the bed, pressing Flynn’s good arm against his torso.  Flynn pried it out and slid it under Repede’s neck as the dog brought his head around to gently lick the side of Flynn’s face. 

“Thanks, buddy…”

Repede growled softly, telling him to get better as best he could.  In a way, Repede was better company than anyone else.  He never spoke, so Flynn didn’t have to concentrate too hard to figure out what he was saying or feel rude or frustrated by having to ask him to repeat himself five times.  He also didn’t have to worry about speaking clearly himself. 

“You won’t let them take my arm, will you?”  It probably came out as more of a jumbled moan with slight inflection, but Repede understood him.  He ran his fingers through Repede’s fur, taking what comfort he could.  “I know you understand.  You lost an eye.  You wouldn’t let me lose part of myself, too.”

Repede bumped the side of his face with his nose and pressed his body against Flynn’s side.  He was warm, which helped quell Flynn’s shivering.  As his burns throbbed and ached, he squeezed Repede tight and pressed his face into the side of his neck.  Repede didn’t seem to mind that he was squeezing so tightly, but then he was probably overestimating just how tight he was able to squeeze. 

 

* * *

 

Three days later, Yuri found himself in a different hospital room.

“Have you heard from Estellise yet?” Ioder asked.  He sat upright, with a short-legged table placed over his lap covered in papers.  His left arm was in a sling, but he was able to work from bed.  Yuri didn’t know the full extent of his injuries, but they were at least milder than Flynn’s.

“No.  She and Rita are probably in Mantaic by now, so I’m sure Judy is searching there.  Hopefully she’ll be back soon.”

“Good.  We really need her right now.”

Yuri nodded.  “Yeah.  Flynn especially.”  He knew there were a handful of other Council members also in the infirmary with crippling wounds, but he really couldn’t bring himself to care all that much about them. 

“Not just that.  The government is in disarray.  I’m doing my best to lead from here, but I could really use her help politically.”

“Oh, right.”  Sometimes he forgot that Estelle was involved in the government, too.  She usually tried to keep her nose out of it, but Ioder relied on her as an adviser and she gave her opinion to the Council when it mattered.  “She can tell Sodia to stop wasting time investigating obviously innocent people.”

“We don’t have any other leads.  If she didn’t investigate  _somebody_ , there’d be people clamouring for her to do something.”

Yuri leaned back.  “Yeah, I guess so.  Still, I can’t believe  _I_  made it to the list of suspects.”

“I’m sure she didn’t seriously think you could be involved.”

“For what it’s worth, I promise I’m not the one who blew you up.”

Ioder smirked.  “Thank you, Yuri.  You have to admit, though, it would be a perfect bookend to our relationship, considering how we first met.”

Before Yuri could come up with a witty reply, a nurse entered the room.  At first Yuri thought he was here for Ioder, but then he said, “Yuri Lowell?  Dr. Duringer needs to speak with you.  She says it’s an emergency.”

His heart skipped a beat at ‘emergency’ and he was on his feet in seconds.  “See you around.”

Ioder nodded curtly.  “I understand.”

It took him less than a minute to dash out of Ioder’s room and down the hall to the main office of the infirmary.  He found Dr. Duringer standing near Flynn’s door.

“Hey, Doc.  What is it?”  His heart pounded because he’d just sprinted down the hall, he told himself. It had nothing to do with the fact that apparently there was an emergency with Flynn.

“Good morning, Mr. Lowell.”

Skip the formalities, dammit, and tell him what the emergency was!  “What’s wrong with Flynn?”

She kept her face carefully passive.  “Mr. Lowell, I’m sorry.  I’m afraid it’s time for you to have to make that decision.”

He was too busy reeling from ‘I’m sorry’ because in the second before she’d continued he’d convinced himself it was going to turn into, ‘I’m sorry, but Flynn has passed away’ and just that second of horror was enough to rattle him.  “Which decision?”

“We cannot treat the infection.  If it is not dealt with in the next twenty-four hours, I fear he will die.  He’s currently wavering between unconsciousness and delirium and is in no condition to make a decision himself.  As his next of kin, it’s up to you to decide if we should proceed with the amputation or wait for Lady Estellise.  Please take a few minutes to decide.”

She walked away so he could think in peace, and Yuri slumped against the wall.  He didn’t want to be the one to make this decision.  It was Flynn’s life –  _he_  should get to decide what happened.  But Flynn couldn’t, so it fell to him. 

He entered Flynn’s room and found Repede curled up on the floor by his bed, keeping watch.  Repede eyed Flynn with concern, and Yuri couldn’t blame him.  Flynn was asleep, but it was restless.  He fidgeted and twitched, his sweaty face clearly in pain.  Every breath was laboured and the skin he could see was nearly the same colour as the white bandages. 

“What do you think, Repede?” he asked softly.  “I promised him I wouldn’t let them take his arm.”

Repede sat up, whining.

“But if Estelle doesn’t make it back here within the day, he’ll die.”  He wanted to trust Estelle.  If he gave them the go-ahead to amputate Flynn’s arm and then Estelle arrived an hour later, he would never forgive himself, and Flynn probably wouldn’t either.  If he didn’t give them the go-ahead and Estelle  _didn’t_  show up, Flynn would die and he also would never forgive himself.  He was forced to gamble on whether Estelle would arrive, with Flynn’s life as the wager.

He couldn’t make this decision as himself.  If he was Flynn’s medical proxy, it was his job to make decisions based on what Flynn would want.  Flynn desperately didn’t want to lose his arm, but he also didn’t want to die.  When Flynn was healthy and thinking soundly, he would most likely take the logical route and approach it with optimism.  Flynn could bounce back from anything; he could handle losing an arm, right?  But if it led to him getting discharged from the Knights…

Yuri eyed the bandaged limb, wishing this decision could be easier.  He should have thought this out days ago, because he’d seen the devastation of Flynn’s arm.  He should have known it would reach this point.  Flynn’s arm was beyond recovery.  Even if Estelle gave it her all, there was a good chance it would never be fully functional again.  Flynn wanted to keep his arm, but was he that concerned about saving a useless deadweight? 

As he considered that Flynn’s arm would probably be crippled even if they did wait for Estelle, a decision formed.  This wasn’t simply a fifty-fifty wager of waiting for Estelle and fixing the limb or not taking any chances and cutting it off now.  There was another wager within about whether waiting for Estelle would even be worthwhile, and he didn’t like those odds.  If he wanted to do what was best for Flynn, he really only had one option.  Decision made, he walked back out to talk to the doctor.

“Have you decided?”

Yuri nodded once, Repede sitting against his leg for support.  “Yeah.  If there really is no other way, then… amputate it.”


	3. Retirement

Flynn awoke like an eggbear coming out of hibernation. He was starving and he was in pain. The latter of those had become such a constant state of being over the past week that he barely paid it any head, but his rumbling stomach caused him a bit more distress.

He heard voices, and was surprised to realize he could hear them clearly, with no ringing to get in the way. Of course, he could hear from his left ear only. His right ear hadn't even begun to heal and it was starting to sink in that he was probably going to be permanently deaf in that ear. After almost a minute of lying still and grappling with consciousness, he realized the voices belonged to Yuri and Estelle. Estelle was here! That must mean she'd healed him. That was why he couldn't feel burning pain in his arm anymore.

Actually… he couldn't…  _no_.

Flynn dragged his eyes open and looked to his arm. Or, where there used to be an arm. It now ended with a short stump below his shoulder, wrapped heavily in bandages. "No…" His voice croaked out of his parched mouth, drawing Yuri and Estelle's attention.

"Flynn!" Estelle was at his side in seconds. "Thank goodness you're awake. How do you feel?"

How could his arm be gone? Yuri had promised… He looked to Yuri with betrayal. "My… arm?" Estelle was here. She could have healed it if he still had it.

Yuri stiffened and guilt washed over his face. "Yeah. It's gone. I'm really sorry, Flynn. You were dying."

"But… Lady…"

"I got here this morning," Estelle explained, resting her hands on his left arm. "They amputated it three days ago."

"You've been out of it for almost five days in total," Yuri said. "The infection got really bad. Your doctor told me that if they didn't amputate the arm within twenty four hours, you would most likely die. I'm sorry, but I didn't want to risk waiting for Estelle."

"It's a good thing he didn't. If you'd waited until I arrived, you probably would have succumbed to the infection before I could do anything about it."

"I'm really sorry, Flynn."

Flynn stared at the stump with despair. He didn't blame Yuri, because if their places were reversed he knew he would have chosen the same. It wasn't Yuri's fault his arm was gone.

"I'll get you some water." Estelle hurried away, and Yuri sat on the edge of his bed.

"How do you feel?"

"Better," Flynn admitted. Estelle must have healed him as well as she could, because he no longer felt constant aches from everywhere on his body. The only parts that still hurt were a few lingering pains from burns on his torso and a throbbing ache in his stump. After being in agony for a week, this was heaven.

"Your fever broke this morning so we were expecting you to wake up soon. And you know… I really don't think you would have been able to use your hand anymore even if you had kept the arm."

Flynn sighed, remembering how it had been so badly charred he couldn't even feel it anymore. "I suppose not. It seems my future with the Knights ended as soon as that explosion went off."

"It doesn't have to. You're the commandant, right? You don't need to be on the field all the time, so even if you can't fight as well, that doesn't mean your career is over."

He sounded like a child insisting the tooth fairy was real. "If any captain was in my condition, I would demand they retire. The Knights have rules about disabilities which prohibit you from enlisting and qualify for automatic discharge. Amputation and deafness are both on the list. A commandant doesn't go to the field often, but one who  _can't_  isn't much use. Even then, I can't very well do a desk job if I can't write."

"You can learn to write with your left hand. I do it – it's not that hard."

"It could take a very long time until I'm proficient enough with my left hand to meet the requirements of my job, and there's the issue of being half-deaf as well. Face it, Yuri: I have no choice but to retire."

Estelle hurried back into the room with a glass of water and a bowl of soup. "Here, you must be hungry, too."

"I'm famished, thank you."

Yuri grabbed a bed table from the corner and set it over Flynn's lap while Flynn managed to pull himself into an upright position. Moving around caused everything to ache, but it was nothing compared to the searing agony he remembered. He downed the entire glass of water in one go, but hesitated before eating.

Instinct led his stump to reach for the spoon, but then he faltered. No, that wasn't going to work. He picked it up with his left hand, feeling backward as he reached for the soup. Yuri and Estelle watched him nervously and he tried to look comfortable so they wouldn't worry. Spooning soup to his mouth wasn't too difficult to manage left-handed, but it was weird and he knew this was just the tip of the iceberg. Sure he could feed himself left-handed, but could he fight?

He tried to think of other things. "Has His Majesty recovered yet?"

"He was discharged yesterday," Estelle said.

Flynn's face tightened momentarily at the mention of 'discharge', his own imminent discharge from the military weighing on his mind.

Yuri saw that and moved the conversation on. "Ioder's doing great. The Council is trying to pull itself together, although they've lost a lot of members. They're going to have to start picking a whole new Council."

A new Council and a new commandant. It was a chance for the government to move into fresh hands. Maybe the terrorists would be satisfied with this.

When he finished the soup, he said, "I'd like to get out of bed. It's been a while."

Estelle futzed around like a mother hen. "Do you need any help?"

"I think I can manage on my own." In fact, he  _wanted_  to manage on his own, to prove to himself that he could. Yuri cleared the table and bowl away and Flynn scooted to the edge of the bed. He rested his bare feet on the floor, hesitated for a moment, and then grabbed the nightstand for support in standing. His legs shook and putting weight on them turned the dull ache into a sharp stabbing, but he was upright for the first time since the attack.

"You ok?" Yuri watched him, eyes darting to his shaking knees.

"Y-yeah." He wasn't very good at hiding how much strain this put on his body. Until this morning his legs had been badly broken, so expecting them to bear his weight so soon after Estelle healed him was asking too much. He wobbled, thrown off balance by the lack of an arm to even out his right side. Even his deaf ear messed with his sense of balance, making his right half feel lighter than the left.

Yuri rested a hand on his shoulder to stabilize him. "It's really good to see you on your feet."

He slumped back to the mattress. "I think I'm going to rest again."

"That's a good idea," Estelle said. "You need to get lots of rest. Come on, Yuri, we should let him nap."

"Yeah, ok. I'll stick around in the castle if you need me, all right?"

"Thanks, Yuri."

They left and Flynn laid back in the pillows again. Following conversations was more difficult than he would have expected. He couldn't tell what direction any sound came from and noises from the hall kept distracting him, forcing him to put a lot of effort into hearing when previously it was just something that happened.

Once they were gone, he pulled up the hem of the loose, sleeveless shirt provided by the infirmary and examined his torso. Rough pink scars covered his chest and side in ugly splotches, which throbbed when he pressed them. Burns as severe as his had been, healed more than a week after acquiring them, would leave permanent scars even with Estelle's talent. It was petty to feel upset about having ugly scars when he'd already lost an arm, but permanent disfigurement was one more little thing to add to the pile of misery.

Perhaps he'd feel better about all this if it was the result of a deliberate attack on his life. If someone had tried to kill him because they didn't like his policies, it would  _mean_  something. It would be a price paid for attempting reform, and it would mean he'd accomplished enough that someone would want to stop him. This, though... it was so pointless. He shouldn't have even been in that Council meeting. He'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now his career was over and his life ruined. The pointlessness of it all hurt almost as much as the actual injuries.

He dropped the shirt, not wanting to look any longer. He closed his eyes and fell asleep to thoughts of what a broken, retired knight might do with the rest of his life.

* * *

Sodia brought the retirement papers to his room about five days later. His doctor had given him the all-clear to leave the infirmary tomorrow, so he was in a fairly good mood when she arrived. This was despite the fact that there were several sheets of crumpled paper sitting on the nightstand, each covered in 'Flynn Scifo' written over and over. The lettered were wobbly and crooked, harkening back to when he'd first learned to write as a small child. It looked juvenile, and several pages of practicing later, he still couldn't figure out how to use his left hand to sign his name with any authority.

"Good afternoon, sir." She stood formally by his bed. "I brought the papers you requested."

"Thank you, but there's no need for formalities. I'm not your commanding officer anymore. There's no need to salute a civilian."

Sodia didn't ease her stance. "Sir… you will always be my commander." She set the papers on the table over his lap.

Flynn picked up his pen and searched for the lines he needed to sign. He hated every line of writing because it all looked like a five year old holding a pen for the first time was filling these out. Sodia would fill out everything but his signatures if he asked, but he wanted to do this himself.

He concentrated so much on the difficult of writing left-handed, he barely had time to think about what he was doing. Then he came to the bottom of the last one, and found the final line. This was it. When he signed this, it would be official and he would no longer be a knight. Everything he'd worked for since he was a kid would all end with one scribbled name on a paper. For a few seconds he thought, maybe he was being rash? Maybe he didn't have to retire. He could find a way to do his job even with his new disabilities.

"Sir? Is something wrong?"

If he didn't see her standing next to him, he would have no idea where in the room she was thanks to his damn ear. He wasn't fit for going to the field and a commandant needed to do more than just sit behind a desk scribbling like a child with their first pencil all day.

"No," he murmured. "Nothing is wrong." Except everything was. He signed his name, crooked and clumsy. It barely resembled his signature, but it was enough. He wasn't a knight anymore.

"His Majesty has arranged a ceremony." She picked the papers up and handled them delicately, like she was afraid she'd forget herself and rip them to pieces.

"Yes. I suppose that's the proper thing to do."

"Many people want to thank you for your service. You've done so many great things for the empire."

He only wished he could keep doing those things. "Have you caught the culprits yet?"

"No, sir." She still spoke to him like she was reporting to the commandant. He supposed she'd break the habit with time, especially after a new commandant was appointed. "We currently suspect a group based outside of Zaphias is responsible. We don't think the Zaphias protestors know much about them, but we're still hoping someone can give us a lead."

"That's something, then. You're doing an excellent job of commanding the Knights in my stead." Ioder should promote her to commandant. He'd recommend that to him.

"Thank you, sir." She glanced at the papers in her hand. "I should go turn these in. And, sir… it's been an honour to serve under you."

A slight smile tugged his lips. "And it's been an honour to have you as a subordinate."

She pulled herself so straight Flynn almost looked for strings and saluted him one last time before leaving the room.

* * *

Yuri sat in the sitting room of Flynn's suite in the castle when he heard Flynn's voice. "Yuri?" It was quiet, hesitant. "Could… could you help me?"

Flynn had only been out of the infirmary for two days and his injuries still pained him if they were stressed, so Yuri jumped to his feet, afraid something had re-opened. When he pushed open the door to Flynn's bedroom, he found his friend sitting on the side of his bed with the button of his pants undone and the over shirt of his uniform hanging loose.

"You ok?"

Flynn looked up with a grumpy expression. Mumbling, because it clearly pained him to need to ask, he said, "Could you help me get my uniform on?"

Yuri's worry turned to compassion. "Yeah, of course."

Flynn gestured at his waistband and grumbled, "I can't get the damn button and I haven't even thought about how I'll get the belt on." He mumbled something else, too soft for Yuri to hear.

"What was that?" Flynn still struggled to find the right volume for speaking. He was always either too loud or too quite.

"Maybe I just shouldn't go."

Yuri frowned for a fraction of a second, and then grabbed Flynn's arm. "Stand up."

Flynn did, but said, "I don't want to go to a ceremony where the whole point is for people to stand around feeling sorry for me."

"Yes, clearly you've got that taken care of yourself."

"Excuse me?"

"This is your last act as commandant. Are you really going to shirk your duty? It's not about feeling sorry for you, it's about giving everyone a chance to properly thank you for everything you've done and give them closure."

"Like a funeral for my career."

"It's never going to be fun with  _that_  attitude. The emperor is throwing you a ceremony to thank you for all your hard work. The least you can do is show up." He'd support Flynn as much as he could, but he wasn't going to participate in a pity party. He buttoned Flynn's pants and grabbed the belt from the bed, wrapping it around Flynn's waist before he could back down. "So pull yourself together and get dressed."

Flynn gave him a weary sigh, but let him buckle the belt.

"Do you need to wear armour?"

"No, not on a ceremonial occasion. It's proper to carry my sword, though."

Yuri grabbed the sheath and buckled it on Flynn's right.

"What? I wear it on the left, Yuri."

"Yeah, but you can't draw with your right arm anymore, so that's pretty useless."

"I can't wield it in my left, either."

"Sure you can."

Flynn glared at the hilt. "I suppose I could hold it, but it's not like I can fight left-handed."

"Better than nothing, isn't it? Keep it on the right."

"If you insist."

Yuri straightened Flynn's shirt and then stepped back. "There, look, you're properly dressed now. One last hurrah as the commandant."

"What should I do about this?" He wiggled his stump and the empty sleeve flapped back and forth. "It looks weird just hanging there."

"Uh…" Yuri glanced around the room and spotted a couple pins on Flynn's desk. He snatched these up and grabbed the empty sleeve. "Here." He pinned the wrist to the shoulder, folding it around the stump. "There, how's that?"

"I don't know… do you think it just draws further attention to the fact that it's gone?"

"Flynn, every person at the ceremony knows exactly why you're retiring. Everyone knows it's gone."

That was evidently the wrong thing to say because Flynn face fell even more. "Yeah. You're right. No point trying to hide it."

"Come on, Flynn. Everyone is waiting for you."

Flynn looked to the door and took a long, deep breath. "Ok. Let's get this over with."

The ceremony was nice. Yuri sat in the front row with all his friends and watched Ioder give a short speech about Flynn's accomplishments and all the positive change he'd brought to the Knighthood. Sodia and a few other captains said some words as well, while Flynn sat near the podium looking like he wanted to curl in on himself and disappear. There were seats for a handful of high ranking officials in the front, but the rest of the courtyard was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with knights who wanted to see him off.

There was a bit of fumbling when Ioder tried to shake Flynn's hand, since his left arm was still in a sling. They ended up with their arms awkwardly twisted, and Flynn apologized profusely even though there was clearly nothing he could have done. They gave him a wreathe of flowers, which was apparently some kind of award, and Ioder pinned a medal to the front of his uniform. Even from the audience, Yuri could tell Flynn was spending the entire ceremony struggling not to cry. In the end, Flynn walked away through a corridor of saluting knights, managing against all odds to keep his head high.

Once everything was wrapped up, Yuri returned to Flynn's suite. Flynn had left the door unlocked, so he showed himself in. "Flynn?" He heard movement from the open bedroom door. Bed springs creaked and fabric rustled. Yuri poked his head through the door. "Flynn?"

Flynn jerked, looking over with surprise. "Oh. It's you."

"What are you doing?"

Flynn lay on his back, thrashing on his bed. "I'm trying to get my belt off. I can't do this, Yuri."

Yuri considered standing back and letting Flynn figure things out by himself, but the three-pronged belt was tricky enough with two hands and Flynn was clearly not in the mood for any more struggling. "Here, I'll get it."

"This is pathetic." He lay still while Yuri unbuckled his belt. "I can't even undress myself."

"From now on, don't wear such a complicated belt. You just need to adapt." He tossed the belt away and then undid the button on Flynn's pants. "You can get the rest off yourself, can't you?"

He pushed himself upright. "I think so." He struggled out of his shirts until he sat half-naked on the bed, gazing down at chest. He looked like a map, with an ocean of smooth skin interrupted by large swaths of rough, raised scarring. He pulled his eyes away from the scars and to the uniform laying crumpled on the floor.

Yuri couldn't remember the last time he saw Flynn toss his uniform aside without folding it neatly; probably never.

"I'm not a knight anymore." He said it dully, like it hadn't quit sunk in yet.

"…No."

"I'm  _retired_. How can I be retired? I'm not even thirty."

"Shit happens."

"What am I going to do with my life? Being a knight is the only thing I know how to do."

"You'll figure things out."

"Hopefully. You know, I keep trying to reach for things, but then… I remember. It still feels like my arm should be there, but then it's not." He wiggled his stump meaningfully. "I can't even write my name, Yuri."

He was dangerously close to slipping into a fit of self-pity again. "Do you know what you need?"

"Huh?"

"A drink."

"Pardon?"

"Let's go to the bar. We'll have a couple drinks, have a good time, celebrate the end of a great career, and let loose. Come on, it'll be fun."

Flynn scanned the room, searching for an excuse not to go. Not finding one, he sighed. "If you insist."

They went to Yuri's favourite bar in the lower quarter. Most people here knew them, so Flynn got more than a few sympathetic looks from old friends. Yuri was going to make this a fun, casual night, to prove to Flynn that he could still be normal.

They sat at the bar and Yuri said, "Two beers, please."

The barkeep did a double take. "Oh, Yuri, Flynn! Of course, I'll get that for ya." He came back with a fair of frothy mugs only a minute later. "Don't worry about," he said as Yuri reached for his wallet, "It's on the house."

"Are you sure?"

"Least I can do… you know…" He glanced to Flynn's arm. Flynn had changed into a casual long-sleeved shirt, the sleeve hanging loose.

"Thanks!" Flynn shouted.

"Whoa, keep your voice down." Everyone in the surrounding area had turned to him in surprise at the unnecessarily loud thanks.

Flynn folded in on himself. "Sorry," he whispered. "I can't… everything's really loud in here."

"Loud?" The bar was filled, but not overcrowded. A low din of conversation was the only noise. As far as he knew, Flynn's functioning ear still wasn't perfectly fine, so if anything he should be hearing things quieter, not louder.

"Not loud, exactly. It's like… usually in a place like this, you can drown out the sounds in the background, right? I can't. I can't tell where anything is coming from and it all hits me at once and I have to concentrate to pick out your voice over everyone else."

"Sorry. Would it help to pass notes?"

"No." He picked up his glass and took a sip. "I can be normal. Besides, I can't write."

"Whatever works for you." He put more effort than usual into making sure he spoke slowly and clearly, enunciating each word. "Hey, I don't think I told you about our latest guild mission, did I?"

Flynn took another slow sip. "I don't think so."

"Ok, well it's a great story. We were making a delivery to this mage doing field work in Keiv Moc…"

A few hours later, Yuri was beginning to think coming to a bar might have been a bad idea. Flynn was not normally a heavy drinker and paying attention to how much he'd had to drink had never been a concern of Yuri's before. He'd been pulled into a conversation with someone sitting on his other side while Flynn chatted with a guy who'd grown up on the same street, and when Yuri looked back he suddenly realized Flynn was more than a little tipsy.

"I'm gonna start a new Knighthood," Flynn was enthusiastically saying. "Yeah. I'll be comm'dant of that. An' – an' we'll only take cripples an' it'll be great."

The guys he was talking to cheered and Flynn took another big gulp of beer. His stump shifted like he was about to use that hand, and then he stared at it in confusion for two seconds before leaning over and wiping his upper lip on the shoulder of his shirt.

"Tha's right," another guy said. "Ya don' need the Knights. Rotten sons of bitches anyway. Fuck the Knights."

"Yeah!" Flynn cheered. "Fuck the Knights. They don' want me then… then I don' want them!" Flynn's face was flushed and he wavered on his stool in the struggle to stay upright. Alcohol was not doing great things to his balance, already thrown off by partial deafness and the loss of his arm.

"Hey, Flynn, do you think maybe we should head home soon?"

Flynn had turned away from Yuri so he could hear the people on his right, which meant he now couldn't hear Yuri. "It'll be great…. We'll fight crippled monsters." He laughed loudly at a joke he hadn't told yet. "I – I'll fight 'em with one hand!"

Yuri rested his hand on Flynn's shoulder. "Flynn?"

"Whozzat?!" He whirled around, startled by someone grabbing him without warning. This ruined the precarious balance he had left and as he spun, he toppled off the bar stool. He crashed into someone behind him on his way down, starting a chain reaction of bar patrons bumping into each other like dominos.

"Hey!" Someone shouted as their drink spilled. "Who did that?!"

"Oops!" He flailed on the ground to get up, not seeming to mind that he pressed his still-healing stump against the ground. "Tha' was me. Sorry."

An angry man pushed to the front of the crowd. "Hey, I know you. Ain't you the commandant?"

Yuri gave Flynn a hand to get his feet and Flynn gave the man an irritated look. "No. Aren't ya  _listening?_  I'm… am retired."

"Yeah, you're that guy from the lower quarter who went and became a bigshot political and sold us all out."

Yuri had a sneaking suspicion this man was involved in the government protests. Considering Yuri didn't know him, he had to be one of the more radical members that Yuri's friends kept away from. Before this conversation could get out of hand, Yuri stepped between them. "Hey, Flynn's done nothing of the sort. You want to get mad at political guys, take it out on the Council."

"Not like we can," another guy piped in, apparently a friend of the first. He snickered and added, "Most of 'em are dead now."

"Pity that blast didn't take care of this traitor either."

Yuri clenched his fists and narrowed his eyes. "Say that again."

"You heard me. I don't know who set that explosion up, but it woulda been better if it wiped out the whole lot of 'em, commandant included."

Yuri took a step closer to the man. "If you have a problem with Flynn, you've got one with me."

"Ok!" Without warning, he socked Yuri in the face.

Flynn shouted in outrage and flew forward as Yuri stumbled back. "Flynn!" It was too late to stop him. Fuelled by drunken rage, he punched the man solidly in the cheek and everything flew out of control from there. Flynn's friends from the bar ran to his aid while the protester's friends came to his. Well, if there was going to be a fight, Yuri was damn sure he was going to finish it.

Yuri was no stranger to bar fights. He even had the advantage in this one, because most of his opponents were drunk while he was still mostly sober. He fended them off with a grin, artfully dodging attacks while landing more than a few of his own. After the stress of the past two weeks, letting loose on a bunch of assholes exhilarated him.

"You sell out!" an angry protester said as Yuri leaned sideways just in time to avoid a fist to the face. "Why're you defendin' the government!?"

Yuri darted around, lashed out his leg and shoved at the exact right time to send the man flying to the floor. "If you can't tell the difference between the corrupt government and a retired knight, that's really not my problem."

Yuri's heart pounded and adrenaline surged as he whirled through the fight, feeling more alive than he had since he first saw smoke pouring out the castle. He and Flynn were fighting side-by-side, and maybe this meant things could actually go back to normal. "Hey, Flynn, check out – Flynn!"

And then he realized Flynn wasn't fighting side-by-side any longer. Yuri was fighting just like he used to, but through some combination of lingering pain holding him back, struggling to fight with only his weaker left arm, and the disorientation of being partially deaf, Flynn was getting his ass kicked. One guy had his arms around Flynn's armpits, pinning him against his chest, while another rained punches on him.

Yuri charged and tackled the guy punching him, pinning him to the floor. "What kind of douchebag are you?!" he roared as he slammed his fists into the guy's face. "Beating up a disabled guy?!"

The man holding Flynn released him, letting Flynn fall to the floor. He attacked Yuri, but as he bent over to grab him, Yuri reached up, grabbed his arm and collar of his shirt, and used his momentum to flip him over his shoulder and slam into the ground. Yuri leapt to his feet and went to Flynn's aid. "Hey, you all right?"

"Y-yeah," Flynn mumbled, wiping blood from his chin.

"Let's get out of here before the knights show up." He helped Flynn to his feet and wove through the brawling crowd. He felt guilty about leaving a fight he'd started before it ended, but he needed to get Flynn out of here.

Outside, the cool air cleared his head and further calmed him down. "I'm sorry, Flynn, I should have watched out for you more."

"No. I… I should take care o' myself…" He wrapped his arm around Yuri's shoulders for support as Yuri guided him back to the Comet. "It's my fault. I can't fight."

"You're just out of practice, that's all. I bet you haven't been in a good old fashion bar fight in ages."

"I can't fight." They reached the main square and Flynn pulled away from Yuri. "Look at me. I used'a be the comma'dant an' I got beat up by a bunch o' nobodies." After taking a few steps forward, he stumbled, spun his arm to try to balance and then fell forward. He caught himself with one arm but forgot to compensate for not being able to catch himself on the other, so he fell sideways and smashed his shoulder into the ground. "I can't even walk!"

Yuri stood by Flynn's side, trying not to get irritated with him. This was his fault; he should have watched closer to make sure Flynn didn't go overboard in drowning his sorrows. "Yeah, well, that's because you're drunk."

Flynn got to his knees and awkwardly crawled to the edge of the fountain. He leaned against it, resting his head on the stone edge. "I don' feel good."

"Again: drunk." Yuri wasn't very familiar with being the sober one when they went out. Usually he and Flynn either got equally smashed or Flynn stayed sober and reprimanded him.

"'M not drunk!"

"Whatever you say, Flynn." Yuri sat on the edge of the fountain and Flynn's head lolled against his knees. "Do you want to keep going home or were you planning on sleeping out here?"

"Whatza point? 'M not a knight no more." He clutched his empty sleeve and tugged angrily.

"I'm not a Knight either and I managed to survive."

" _Shut up!_ "

Yuri glanced around, wondering if Flynn's unexpected bellow had awoken someone in the surrounding neighbourhood. "Hey, keep your voice down. The entire lower quarter doesn't want to be part of our conversation."

"Don' tell me ta quiet. 'M plenty quiet. Ev'thing's quiet 'cause 'm deaf and 'm broken and 'm useless."

"What are you talking about? You held your own pretty good for a guy with one arm."

"Stop it!" Flynn's voice cracked. "Don' tell me it's ok. It's  _not_  ok! I los' my  _fuckin'_  arm!"

"Ok, you're right. This whole situation sucks, but you're drunk and beat up, so I think we should continue on to my place."

"Don' wanna go with you. I hate you an' your… your arms."

He looked at the top of Flynn's head with a frown. "You hate me?"

"Why'd ya tell 'em to take my arm? You  _promised_."

Guilt stabbed his heart. "You would have died."

"But now I have no arm!" He smashed his fist against the street. "An' 'm unem… play…unployed… can't get 'nother job, an' 'm ugly an' can't hear right an'-"

"Ugly? What are you talking about?"

"This!" Flynn grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked it down, stretching it to expose his shoulder and the top of his chest.

"You mean your scars? You idiot, you have plenty of scars already. That doesn't make you ugly."

"Not like this." He let go and the collar snapped back to place. "They're all… all ev'rywhere…rough an' gross."

Yuri didn't know how worthwhile it was to try to talk to him about this now when he probably wouldn't even remember half of it in the morning, but he might as well try. "You can't even see them unless you take off your shirt and knowing you, that would only happen if you were being intimate with someone. Anyone who would give you grief about your scars doesn't deserve you anyway."

"What d'you know? Ya dumb… dumb… two-arm person. I used ta be the  _comm'dant_ , Yuri! An' now 'm… I'm… I…" His words broke off with a sob. His head turned and he pressed his face into Yuri's knees, wrapping his arm around Yuri's shins.

Yuri just sighed and let him cry. His shoulders heaved as tears and snot soaked into Yuri's pant leg. Yuri sat still and let him get it all out. This went on for about five minutes, until his sobs mostly dried up and he mumbled, "I don' feel good…"

Yuri leaned forward and rubbed his back. "Let's go back to my place and-"

"Think 'm gonna-" He threw up on Yuri's pants.

Yuri paused for a long moment, and then sighed once again. "Yeah. We're going home."

"Sorry," Flynn mumbled.

"It's fine; I was gonna wash these pants anyway." He stood and grabbed Flynn under the armpits, hoisting him to his feet.

"'M really sorry, Yuri."

"I told you, it's fine." His pants were already covered in Flynn's tears and snot – vomit wasn't  _that_ much worse. At least, that's what he told himself.

Flynn leaned on Yuri all the way back to the Comet, pressing his face into his shoulder whenever he could. "'M sorry I said I hate you… I don' hate ya… I love you, Yuri."

"Yeah, I love you too, Flynn."

"Ok, good, 'cause I don' know what I'd do if you di'n't."

"That's nice, Flynn."

They reached the inn and Yuri carefully guided Flynn up the steps, which was difficult because Flynn seemed to have forgotten how stairs worked. "Yuri… you hafta help me figure out what 'm gonna do with my life. I dunno. 'M not a knight. What'm I gon' do?"

Flynn had apparently decided this was a good place to stop and ask him that question, so Yuri heaved Flynn up the last couple of steps. "You can figure this out when you're sober."

"'M sober now… 'm barely drunk. 'M like… four drunk. Outta scale o' ten."

"Uh-huh."

"Can't be drunk. Proper people get drunk an' 'm a… a broke people. Person. Thing."

"You're not broken, Flynn." He unlocked his door and dragged Flynn in. Repede looked up from where he was napping but put his head down with a snort of disdain when he smelled alcohol. "You're just as much of a proper person as you were before, you're just not in the Knights anymore."

"But I wanna be a knight, but I  _can't_."

"Yeah, I know. I get that you're upset, but you should go to sleep now."

"Ummmm…" he swayed and Yuri caught him before he hit the floor again. "Yeah. Maybe good idea. 'M kinda sleepy."

Flynn stumbled to the bed, tripped, and face-planted. Yuri rolled his eyes and fetched a glass of water and a wet cloth from the wash basin on the dresser. "Drink this."

"'M not thirsty."

"You'll thank me when you wake up. Just drink it."

Flynn gazed at him in confusion. "Why?"

"Because you love me and I want you to, remember?"

"Oh. Oh, yeah. Ok, Yurrr, I'll drink it." Flynn did as he was told and downed the entire glass of water, which would hopefully help soften his hangover in the morning.

Yuri rubbed his face with the cloth, washing away dried blood and vomit. He wasn't too badly hurt from the fight, at least not externally. He was probably going to ache from bruises in the morning, though. "Go to sleep."

Flynn flopped on his side and closed his eyes. Yuri knelt and untied his boots, pulled them off, and then maneuvered his legs onto the bed. "This makes up for all the times you've berated me for drinking too much."

Flynn mumbled something into the pillow, but Yuri couldn't make it out. For a moment he considered crawling into bed next to Flynn, but Flynn splayed across the narrow mattress and the reminder that he was at the point of throwing up was still fresh on his leg. Yuri shook his head in bemusement, tossed his pants into the laundry and changed into sweats, and curled up on the floor next to Repede.


	4. Chapter 4

Flynn lay on Yuri's bed, absently fiddling with his empty sleeve. He lay on his left side, because his right shoulder ached. Yuri said he'd fallen on it last night, which sounded vaguely familiar. Thinking about how drunk he'd been made his face burn, but really, what did his reputation matter anymore? He didn't have a uniform to uphold. He was just Flynn, a disabled nobody living on a veteran's pension because he wasn't qualified for any other kind of job and nobody would want a cripple for unskilled labour.

At least his hangover was gone. That was something, at least. He'd woken up highly confused about why he was in Yuri's bed and feeling like he'd been run over by a cart. Yuri helpfully kept the curtains closed, brought him water, and kept his sarcastic commentary to a minimum.

He now lay in bed, not sure what to do. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had so few responsibilities. Even in the infirmary he didn't feel like he had free time because healing had been a full-time job, and after getting out there was paperwork to complete, loose ends to wrap up, and the ceremony to prepare for. Now he was really, truly retired and for the first time in years he had nowhere to be and nothing he needed to do.

Yuri had gone out about an hour ago, just as his hangover cleared up. Flynn considered walking back to the castle, but he was so comfortable here and sore all over. A couple of apple gels this morning had dealt with his injuries from the bar fight, but all the activity had strained his still-healing burns and tender stump, and that wasn't counting the weird ache that hovered in the space where his elbow ought to be. He couldn't explain that one, but hurting somewhere he didn't even have a body was bullshit.

Suddenly Yuri was in front of him and he jolted, letting the sleeve drop. "Oh! Hi."

Yuri said something, but since his left ear was pressed against the pillow all he made out was muffled murmuring. He rolled over and pushed himself up. "Sorry, what did you say?"

"What, you didn't notice me walk through the door?"

Flynn glanced to the door with a scowl. "I was sort of zoned out, and couldn't hear it."

"Whatever." He tossed something familiar on the bed. "Here, I went to the castle and got this for you."

Flynn stared at his sword in confusion. "What's this for?"

"Get up. We're going to spare."

His fingers clenched around the blanket and he looked away from the sword. "You know I can't."

"Sure you can."

His face snapped to Yuri and he grabbed his sleeve, shaking the empty tube at him. "With what hand?"

"Your left, of course."

"I'm not left handed."

"You are now."

He let the sleeve drop and tried to keep from getting irritated. He knew Yuri was trying to help in his own way, but Yuri's way was frustratingly insensitive to the reality that he'd lost his arm and this was actually kind of a major deal. "Not everyone is like you, Yuri. Most people can't just toss their sword from one hand to the other and fight just as well. My left hand  _doesn't work_  the same as my right does… did. I can't even write my damn name!"

"Yeah, but it's the only hand you've got, so it's time to stop feeling sorry for yourself and figure out how to use it."

Anger flashed as he jumped to his feet. "Feeling sorry for myself? I lost  _everything_ , Yuri."

"You lost your job, your arm, and your ear. That's three things; hardly everything."

"I think those are fairly notable things, though."

"So, what? You're just going to roll over and give up? Is that all our dreams meant to you – you'd work toward them as long as it was easy, but as soon as you have a major setback you'd give up?"

Anger still burned, but it wasn't directed solely at Yuri anymore. It was anger at this whole situation and Yuri had the misfortune of being an easy target. "No," he muttered. "Of course not. I still want to achieve our goal, but… how can I? It was my job to change the Knighthood from within, but I got kicked out. How can I fight to make people smile when I can't even fight?"

Yuri picked up Flynn's sword and held it out. "You didn't know how to fight when we made that promise, either. We were just dumb kids fooling around with sticks. It took you years of training to become the amazing swordsman you are now, and if you did it once to get your right hand into gear, you can do the same for your left."

Flynn hesitated. "My right hand is naturally dominant. I can't expect my left to learn at the same pace I once did."

"Yeah, but your brain already knows how to fight. It's just a matter of getting that muscle memory in your left arm and mirroring every action to work from the opposite hand."

Flynn had a feeling it was going to be a lot more difficult than Yuri made it sound, but maybe he was right. He had one good arm; he ought to get up and use it. His hand closed around the hilt, gripping tightly. It felt weird to hold a sword in his left hand, but good to hold one at all.

Yuri grinned. "That's the spirit. Come on, I'll give you lefty lessons."

They made their way to the empty lot they used to spar in as kids. It had nothing on the state-of-the-art training grounds he used at the castle, but it felt right to come back here when he was going back to the beginning. They didn't have perfectly even ground or training dummies or practice mats, but they had each other and that had been enough when they were kids.

"Fighting with your left hand is just like fighting with your right," Yuri explained when they got there. "You just have to mirror the steps. See, if you'd usually guard like this…" He held his sword in his right hand and went into a basic stance.

It was weird to see Yuri hold a formal guard, because he'd branched off from traditional techniques years ago. His fighting was erratic and fluid, mixing together various traditions with a little of his own flare. Sometimes Flynn forgot that they'd started learning the same way, so any novice steps Flynn knew, Yuri was an expert in as well. This, along with the fact that he was equally proficient with both hands, made him the perfect teacher.

"But when you hold your sword in your left hand, it's reversed. See, my feet are all backward here. If you'd usually lead with your right foot, you have to lead with your left."

Flynn watched Yuri's feet carefully and then mimicked the action. It was a rudimentary guard he'd perfected almost a decade ago, but the stance had become second nature to him over the years and flipping it around so he led with his left foot felt foreign. "This is weird. I feel off-balance."

"That's probably also because you're used to holding a shield in your opposite hand."

Flynn glanced to his stump with a frown. "True."

"Is there any way you can? Your fighting style is adapted for use with a shield. I mean, I can train you to fight like me, but I think you'd rather stick to what you're used to."

"What do you think I'm going to hold a shield with?" He switched into the next traditional stance, his feet fumbling to reverse. The problem with becoming such a good swordsman that he could perfectly conform to any position was that changing things up became almost impossible. His legs knew exactly where they needed to be, and didn't want to listen when he told them they had to do this backward.

"I was thinking about Barbos. He lost part of his arm, too, right? And he had it replaced by a spiky thing. You're still leaning to the right."

"Damn." Flynn corrected his posture. "You want me to put a spinning ball of spikes at the end of my stump? I think I'd hurt myself before anyone else."

"Not exactly that, no. But maybe you can get something else? Hook hands and peg legs are a thing. I'm sure you can find something."

"Hook hands only work if you still have an elbow. Without being able to bend it, any kind of arm would just be cumbersome. Is there even a point to this stance? Usually it's a good defence because it gives you a lot of freedom with your shield, but if I don't have one I feel quite open."

"I never bother with it. You're right; it's meant for shields. I'll ask around Dahngrest about who built Barbos' hand. Maybe they'll know a solution."

And so lessons went. They didn't even end up sparring the first day, because the entire afternoon was spent drilling and attempting to switch his brain around to do things from his left. Flynn knew Yuri must be bored silly just standing around playing coach, but he never complained. Flynn hadn't drilled this extensively since he was a teenager, and by the time Yuri called it a wrap around sundown he was sweating and exhausted.

"I think you did pretty well today."

Flynn sheathed his sword and wiped sweat from his brow. "I can't get used to this."

"You giving up already?"

"No," he immediately said. "I misspoke. I meant that getting used to this is going to be very difficult, but I'll manage."

Yuri clapped him on the shoulder as they started back to the inn. "That's the spirit."

"Ow," he rested his hand gingerly over his shoulder.

Yuri pulled his hand away, looking guilty. "Sorry."

"It's fine. It's still sore, that's all." Considering until recently the entire shoulder had been covered in burns, he thought a lingering ache that stung like a sunburn was a fair compromise. "Lady Estellise says the burns will stop hurting within a week. But, there's nothing she can do about the scars."

"Are you still upset about that?"

"What do you mean, 'still'?"

"Last night, you cried about being ugly and how no one would ever love you."

Flynn's cheeks warmed. "Did I?"

"I told you that you were being dumb."

"Yes. I'm sorry, I'm not a very eloquent drunk."

"No one is. But, like I said last night, anyone who would give you grief about your scars isn't worth your time anyway."

"It feels rather petty to be concerned with aesthetic problems in light of everything else." He wasn't really  _that_  torn up about the scarring, but it was one more injustice on top of everything else.

"Yeah, it is."

Flynn turned his head with a scowl. "Thanks."

"Maybe it will be good for you. Everyone in the empire thinks you're hot stuff, so a blow to your insurmountable handsomeness might be good for your ego." Yuri thought for a moment and added, "Ironic that it would be caused by you  _literally_  becoming hot-"

"If you're about to make a pun about me being on fire, let me remind you that normal people consider it impolite to tease your friend about being in devastating agony and suffering disability."

The was a long silence where the conclusion of Yuri's comment was painfully clear. They reached the inn before he could say anything else. "You hungry? I'm starving. I'll cook some dinner."

Usually Flynn would nod and then go upstairs to wait for Yuri to finish cooking, because Yuri never appreciated his help in the kitchen. Today, though, he wanted to do something more. "I am. Could you use some help cooking?"

Yuri hesitated, instinct telling him to deny Flynn and not let him anywhere near the food. The unexpectedness of Flynn's request surprised him enough to consider it, and Yuri's eyes drifted between Flynn's stump and his stubborn eyes.

"Yeah." Yuri grinned. "I could use an extra hand. You'll be a great help."

Flynn wasn't a great help, but he did what he could. He stirred a pot when asked and sprinkled salt on the meat, which was really not much more unhelpful than he usually was in a kitchen. When they were done cooking, Yuri plated everything and carried it out to the inn's dining area.

"Smells good. You didn't even manage to mess up the seasoning."

"I'm not  _completely_  incompetent with food."

Yuri gave him a look.

Flynn frowned, and picked up his fork. He hesitated as he stared at his steak. "Uh… actually, Yuri, if it's not too much trouble, could you… cut it for me?"

"Oh, yeah, of course." Yuri pulled his plate over and sliced the steak into bite-sized pieces.

Flynn silently fumed, frustrated that he couldn't do this himself. He was lucky to have a friend like Yuri.

Over dinner, they talked about anything. Most of Flynn's conversation the past week had been dominated by his disability, so it was nice to just chat like the old days. He almost felt normal again, even if he did have to eat pre-cut chunks of meat and kept turning his head and saying "Pardon?" every time he struggled to hear Yuri over the background din of other patrons.

When that background din suddenly died off, Yuri and Flynn both looked over in curiosity. Flynn jumped to his fight the moment he saw who'd arrived. "Your Majesty! Do you need something?"

"Sorry to interrupt," Ioder said while the rest of the inn watched him with uncertain eyes. Flynn spotted a pair of knights by the door, no doubt here as bodyguards. "Estellise told me I could probably find you here."

"Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing is wrong. I wanted to talk to you. I have a proposition for you."

Flynn looked to Yuri apologetically. As much as he enjoyed having dinner with him, the emperor wanted to speak with him and that had to take priority.

Yuri waved his hand. "Go on, I'll meet you in my room later."

"Sorry." He followed Ioder out the building.

* * *

When Flynn told Yuri what Ioder had said, he gaped at him. "What?"

"I thought I was the deaf one?"

"I heard what you said, but… what? Can he even do that?"

Flynn sat on the side of the bed with a shrug. "He's the emperor. He can do what he wants, especially now that there are hardly any Council members left to oppose him."

Yuri leaned against his dresser, arms crossed. "Yeah, but… joining the Council yourself? I thought only nobles could be on the Council."

"Traditionally, yes. However, we've been attempting to reform the government for a while now. The massacre of the Council was a tragedy, but it does give us an opportunity to start over. I was already close to being an honorary noble with my position as commandant, so appointing me to the Council would raise the least amount of fuss while establishing a precedent that commoners could join."

"I see the reasoning, but I can't imagine you on the Council."

"I never thought of myself as a Councilman either, but… I don't have many options now." He fidgeted with his loose sleeve. "I always thought I would bring justice to the empire through the Knights, but that option was taken away from me. I count myself unbelievably lucky that His Majesty would offer me this position so that I still have a way to influence the direction of the empire, as a politician this time rather than a soldier."

Yuri nodded slowly. "Yeah, that makes sense." He frowned and scuffed his foot. "I guess I just don't like the idea of you being in the Council. It's a good idea, though."

"I'm going to keep working to make the empire a better place. I can't do it as a knight anymore, but I'm confident my replacement will keep the Knighthood in a positive direction. Meanwhile, I'll shift my focus to reforming the Council."

If he used this as a chance to address that corruption and fix the Council from within, then at least something good would have come from the attack. The meaninglessness of losing his arm because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time made anger burn hotter than his burns, but if he thought of it as something that gave him a chance to fix the Council and not just the Knights, he could live with it.

Yuri shrugged. "Seems like a good idea to me. I admit, I kinda hoped you might come to Dahngrest with me. It'd be nice to hang out with you more than once every few months."

Flynn smiled apologetically. "Sorry. My place is still in the empire, and yours with the guilds. That, at least, hasn't changed." Everything else in his life was changing, so a little stability was nice.

"Alright. It's good that you have a purpose in life again. Really, I'm happy for you. I'll stay in Zaphias for a little longer and help you train."

Even if Flynn wasn't going to be a soldier any longer, knowing he could wield a sword in a pinch would be a huge boost to his confidence. "I'm going to need some help for a little while. I can't fight, I can't write, I can't cook, I can't get dressed… but I'll learn."

"I can stay as long as you need. We don't have any missions lined up in Dahngrest."

"Thank you, Yuri. Really, throughout this whole situation, you've been so wonderful. I couldn't have done it without you."

Yuri shrugged. "Yeah, you could have. You're tougher than you look. Once you're a decent lefty swordsman, I'll head back to Dahngrest. I'll do my thing in the guilds and you work on reforming the empire from within."

And little by little, things would go back to normal.

* * *

Flynn left the Council chamber with a headache. It had been five months since Yuri left and Flynn took up his new post full-time, but he still hadn't gotten used to it. Whenever he passed knights in the hallways he felt a pang of envy and going to work in a robe instead of armour left him feeling naked.

He blamed his headache entirely blamed on his ears. He could usually hear without much problem when just one person spoke, but when arguments broke out and angry voices began laying over each other, the sound bombarded him and he couldn't pick out any individual voices or which way they came from. Even now, in the crowd streaming out of the new Council chamber, the sound overwhelmed him.

A hand nudged his elbow and he jerked around in surprise. "Do you need – oh!" He'd been expecting another Councilmember, and was pleasantly surprised to find Yuri.

"Yo. Long time no see."

The rest of the crowd kept moving and Flynn stepped aside to talk to Yuri. "It's good to see you again."

"Want to head to your room? I dropped my stuff there already. Sodia let me in."

"Yes, ok. How's your guild working?"

"Everything's fine." They began walking through the halls. "We've been on loads of missions, but nothing major. Nothing I haven't told you about in letters already. How's everything here?"

"It's going well. I won't say I don't miss being the commandant sometimes, but being a politician isn't all bad either." He'd written a response to every letter, even if it took him twice as long as normal to compose them. He had an assistant who transcribed any important documents for him, but whenever he could he tried to write himself. He was never going to learn if he didn't practice, even if that did mean letters to Yuri were messy scribbles. But, he had hope. When he first started writing to Yuri, the letters looked like they'd been written by a five year old. Now, he'd progressed to the writing ability of a ten year old. Writing with his left hand was aggravating, but looking back at his earliest attempts and seeing how far he'd come gave him hope.

At Flynn's room, he opened the door and led Yuri in.

"I meant to ask, isn't this officially the commandant's suite?"

"Yes, but when Sodia was appointed as my successor she refused to take it. I'm planning to purchase a house in the public quarter eventually, but for now I'd like to stay in the castle. I don't like thinking of myself as a person who relies on servants, but I must admit they're helpful." He had never realized just how many daily tasks required two hands. Making his bed was a complicated affair every morning and he used his foot while folding laundry. He had difficulty managing in a kitchen with two hands, so having fully-prepared meals delivered significantly reduced his risk of catching on fire again.

"What's this?" A long wooden box sat on the couch next to Yuri's bag.

Yuri grinned. "Present for you. It's why I came to visit."

"A present? What for? I don't have anything for you."

Yuri waved his hand. "Don't worry about it. Open it."

Flynn pried the lid off and found himself looking at a metallic arm. He might have thought it was ordinary armour, but leather cords ran down its length and the end gave way to a mess of straps. "What is it for?"

"You wear it, of course. I commissioned it from the Soul Smiths. See if you can get it on yourself – they said they designed it with that in mind."

"You had an arm made for me?" He ran his fingers along the metal. How long had it been since he'd worn armour? He missed the cold metal, the smell of polish and leather, the way it creaked with shifts in his weight. "Let me get changed first."

"Need a hand?"

Flynn smiled. "Not anymore, thanks. I got this."

Five minutes later, he returned wearing casual clothes, he carried his shirt in his hand, since it would go on over the arm. He'd figured out how to do buttons one-handed and didn't bother with belts anymore. There were snaps on his boots to save him the trouble of laces and he'd had most of his shirts tailored to get rid of the useless flap of fabric on the right sleeve. He counted himself lucky that he was wealthy enough to afford these amenities.

"That's better," Yuri said when he returned. "You look like a fop in Council robes."

"Thanks, Yuri, you look good, too." He could feel Yuri's eyes dart across the rough, mottled skin across his shoulder and chest. He hated being shirtless around most people because their eyes were always filled with a mix of disgust and pity, but this was just Yuri. If he would ever be comfortable showing his scars to anyone, it would be him. "How does this work?"

"You put your stump in that socket and then the straps go around your other shoulder."

"I think I can figure this out." He picked up the arm, which was heavier than he expected. It must have some kind of internal structure to keep it from caving in. The socket was padded with a leather strap he pulled taut. It was like a belt, but instead of a buckle there was a snap. Excellent – he loved snaps. Once that was in place, he wrapped the rest of the straps around his neck, torso and opposite shoulder. It looked confusing sitting on a table, but once he had it on, it was clear where everything was supposed to go.

After pulling everything tight and snapping it into place, he stood back and held his arms out. "Well?"

"You look… symmetrical."

Flynn looked down at the metal arm. "Yeah… it balances me out, although it can't really do anything."

"Not quite. The Soul Smiths are the best manufacturers around, you know. Try flexing your right shoulder."

He did so, and as he tightened the muscle just below his shoulder, it pulled one of the cords that ran down the arm. This caught at the elbow and pulled it in. "Oh! This is interesting." He experimented with flexing and un-flexing, watching the arm move back and forth.

"That's not all." Yuri went to Flynn's room and emerged a couple of minutes later with a dusty shield. It had been sitting in his closet for months, along with his old uniform. He didn't have a use for it anymore but didn't have the heart to get rid of it.

"Look at that." Yuri grabbed the metal wrist and guided the handle of the shield around it. He pulled a switch and the fingers snapped into place, locking the hand around the shield.

The weight threw him off at first, but he knew he'd get used to it with practice. He could use what remained of his arm to move it around and use the elbow mechanism to move it in and out. It was hardly the complete range of movement he'd need to fight to his old ability, but it was definitely something.

Yuri picked up his sword. "Care to try it out?"

"You want to put getting your ass kicked by a one-armed man on your record?"

"Oh-ho, those're fighting words. Don't think I'm going to go easy on you."

"I wouldn't have it any other way."

* * *

Yuri won their spar. Yuri claimed it was a draw, but it was obvious he had the upper-hand all the way through. Flynn wasn't too put-out about this, since he hadn't expected to win. Yuri was as skilled as ever, while he struggled to get used to the weight of his shield in the metal arm and remembering to keep his shoulder tense if he didn't want his arm to go flying out at the worst possible time. Add to that the fact that Flynn was still working on gaining strength and dexterity in his left hand, and if Yuri had truly been giving it his all he would have been defeated within a couple of minutes.

Despite all of that, it was fun. He hadn't had a good fight in months and getting his blood pumping with a sword in hand broke up the monotony of spending his day dealing with bureaucracy. When he first started fighting left-handed he couldn't get the movement to feel natural at all, but with no other choice but to use his left arm for everything, it was starting to feel normal. Even though he only managed to successfully use his shield to block a handful of blows, he hadn't felt better in weeks when they finally collapsed to the ground, out of breath.

Flynn unclicked the mechanism at his wrist to release the shield and then pulled the arm onto his chest. After a long period of panting for breath, and let out, "Nice."

"You did ok, too. You know, once you get really good at your left hand, you'll actually have an advantage."

"Why is that?" He stared at the sky, thanking the day for being so calm. He wanted to listen to Yuri today without his voice having to compete with the wind or bird song.

"Most righties spend their whole life fighting other righties. Then they meet a leftie and everything is backward and the sword is never where they expect it to be."

"I'm right-handed – well, I was – and I never had a problem fighting left-handed people."

"That's because you grew up sparing with me."

"Oh, true."

"I'm not staying in Zaphias long. I was just going to drop off the arm on my way back to Dahngrest. I can stay if you want me, though."

"No, you should go."

Yuri snorted. "Didn't know you were so eager to get rid of me."

Flynn kicked his shin. "You know it's not like that. I earnestly appreciate everything you've done for me, but I like standing on my own. I thought losing my arm would mean the end of my life, but it hasn't. It's taken me on a path I never anticipated, and I want to walk it on my own, to prove to myself that I can."

"It never occurred to me that you couldn't."

"I think… it's going to be ok."

"You've got to keep training until you can give me a decent fight again, though. I kinda miss having anyone even close to my level."

Flynn smirked. "I'll see what I can do."

"Hey, another thing." Yuri rolled on his side, propped up on one elbow. "I was thinking, you're probably the best guy to ask this very serious philosophical question: what is the sound of one hand clapping?"

Flynn gave Yuri's smug face a deadpan glare and then smacked him across the face. "Sounds something like that."


End file.
